Apple happy to beta around the bush in 2015

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Photo / AP

Time again for that unique gathering of geeks, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC in San Francisco.

WWDC has become the most anticipated event for tech media, much to Apple's competitors' chagrin, and there's usually something wow to cover.

This year however, the announcements at WWDC were more Apple tying up loose ends and tidying things up. So not very exciting, in other words.

Apple's OS X desktop and laptop operating system got an overhaul that's being tested by developers in a beta of El Capitan as it's nicknamed, at the moment. It looks like Apple is addressing some traditionally weak areas with El Capitan like gaming; the Metal graphics layer promises to be speedy, like Microsoft's DirectX.

Nevertheless, Apple will seriously have to change the name soon: El Capitan is officially known as OS Ten version Ten dot Eleven which is a bit ridiculous.

More on OS X 10.11 when I've got the beta going, but there's some interesting things in its mobile cousin, iOS 9, including improvements and refinements to Siri that makes it understand queries better. Eventually; I haven't done a deep dive in iOS 9 yet, but Siri seems a bit random in the first beta, although the rest of the operating system seems pretty stable.

The enhanced Spotlight search with deep links to iOS apps is probably the "killer feature" this time, which will help developers create more useful (and one hopes, user-friendly) programs.

Overall, Apple seems to be filling a few gaps and refining and honing its two operating systems, adding features that other vendors have had already, but doing it better like the low-power mode for iOS.

Now, the company has been accused of being a laggard when it comes to online services, a notion that the new Apple Music should put paid to. By the end of the month, Apple Music will go live in 100 countries worldwide with a catalogue of over 30 million tracks in 320kbps encoding, a 24-hour radio station and social network for artists.

And, as others have noted, Apple Music will have Taylor Swift, unlike Spotify. Very impressive and most likely worth the US$10 or US$15 a month (single use/family account) that Apple wants.

Not so impressive: Apple Pay is still in go-slow rollout mode, with the mobile payments coming only UK and no other countries this time around. Would've been handy to have in NZ, which is a front runner in electronic payments, especially for developers.

Also a bit disappointing: the Apple News Flipboard or Facebook news aggregator app doesn't seem to be available in the first beta of iOS 9. Apple tells me it's coming in the spring to Australia, but not to NZ.

Again, NZ publishers would no doubt have been keen to check out News now.

Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see what incentives there are for news site publishers to join Apple, and how innovative the service is. Everything I've seen so far points to nice design but a traditional business model, unlike the Dutch "micro paywall" site Blendle for instance which appears to have cracked at least part of the conundrum of users wanting content but not being willing to pay for it.

Blendle runs a frictionless micropayments systems where readers pay a little for each article - and if they don't like the piece, they'll get a refund. Apparently it works rather well, so perhaps Apple should go Blendle shopping to stop News from becoming yet another deserted effort, like the earlier Newsstand that hardly anybody seems to use (and which you can't delete from iDevices to make space either).

From the broadband trenches

Communications minister Amy Adams has kicked off a discussion document on changing the "land access" rules which currently make Ultrafast Broadband or UFB installations enormously complicated and time-consuming in some cases, to speed up the uptake of fibre.

One in eight installations run into consent process nightmares, Spark said, and many people just give up faced with the bureaucracy and costs.

That's all good news, and I hope this means more people can actually get UFB instead of being stuck with copper.

On the mobile data side of things, the Commerce Commission released its Telecommunications Monitoring Report 2014, which doesn't make for good reading.

Although we have three 4G providers, mobile data in New Zealand is basically ridiculously expensive - and this is what the Commerce Commission says. And what's up with those low usage figures, like 100 calls and 50 megabyte of data, in 2015?

To get a 4G data plan that you can actually use with 10GB or more, and don't forget that the technology can hit speeds of 100 megabits per second or more, you'll have to spend well over $100 a month. Which is just way too much, and which is why I'm on a measly 1.25GB plan with Vodafone and only ever use mobile data if I can't get Wi-Fi.

In comparison, NZ$80 a month buys a 240Mbps LTE plan in Finland with unlimited data.

That's more than enough broadband for some Finns who use such 4G connections as their day to day internet connection, watching Netflix, gaming, and working because you can and don't have to do it with one eye on the meter like in NZ.

I think the Commission needs to rattle the telcos' cages on this a bit more loudly, because selling quick 3G and 4G data plans with pricey 500MB, 750MB and 1GB plans shows a lack of competition that's hurting customers.